I’ve been playing with the HTC One X for the past couple of weeks and switching between the Sense 4.0 skinned Android device and the Galaxy Nexus, which we’ve reviewed here, I often crave for the latter’s stock Ice Cream Sandwich experience. Don’t get me wrong, HTC has done some great work with its widgets, customizable dock and lockscreen and social integration, but you can’t beat the crave for those stock Android 4.0 neon-blues, especially on such a lovely 4.7-inch display.

There are already a number of custom ROMs for the One X, some with Sense and others without, but what about the most popular aftermarket rom of all, CyanogenMod. Well a developer has ported the latest CyanogenMod 9 (CM9) build to the Tegra 3 bearing HTC One X and released it to the public.continue reading

CyanogenMod’s popularity lies in the fact that the ROM brings to Android a level of customization never seen before. The CyanogenMod team already let us know that they will be releasing individual parts of their upcoming Android Ice Cream Sandwich based CyanogenMod 9 ROM. First the CM9 launcher titled Trebuchet was made available as an APK file, and today you can download the CyanogenMod 9 Music app as a standalone application.

The Music app is extremely customizable; using a theme engine, designers can change every UI element in the app. If you’d rather have the familiar Android Ice Cream Sandwich look, you can download the ‘Google Music’ theme which is based on the latest version of the Google Music app. Within the application you can share what you are listening via social, set songs as ring tones, delete tracks and search. There is a drag-and-drop queue and playlist, a custom lockscreen, and shake and flip actions — you can pause your music by flipping the device face down, and you can customize the shake action to skip tracks for example. The app also comes with a number of custom widgets.continue reading

Android’s real strength is in its developer community. If you want an additional feature not included in stock Android or if you like customizing your devices to death, Android’s developers and aftermarket ROMs will come to your rescue. Aftermarket ROMs can also give old devices new life, and even though manufacturers may take their sweet time updating Android devices, you may find a custom ROM for your device based on the latest version of Android.

One of the most popular Android aftermarket ROMs comes from the CyanogenMod team, which has today reached an important juncture. CyanogenMod had now been installed on over 1 million devices. We’d like to congratulate the team on their success and wish them all the best on their future developing exploits. We are sure that with the advent of the Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich based CyanogenMod 9, the number of installs will really skyrocket.continue reading

We’ve included Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich as one of our favorite pieces of tech for 2011. The main reason Android made it to our shortlist and into our hearts is that because it is an open source project, third-parties are able to use it and build on top of it. If there is something more you want from you mobile OS, or you want to get rid of some annoying feature, chances are there is either an aftermarket ROM, third-party launcher, or an app to do that.

You might know of the team over at CyanogenMod (CM), which creates and publishes for free its own streamlined Android ROMs for over 50 devices. As manufacturers and mobile carriers linger on old versions of Android, CM was the best way for many to update their devices to the latest Android version.

As promised Google made the source code of Android 4.0.1 Ice Cream Sandwich open yesterday. This means that developers can download the code and start tinkering.

Of course, the CyanogenMod team has followed suit and has announced via Twitter that we should be seeing an Ice Cream Sandwich infused CM9 in two months, more or less. This is great news, since most manufacturers will only start to officially update Android devices in the beginning of 2012, with attention placed on 2011 devices first, while some older devices might not be upgraded at all.continue reading